Failure makes an uncomfortable bedfellow. Many business spend their time focusing upon performance goals avoiding mistakes or trying to shift them elsewhere when they happens. In many start ups and established businesses the resulting blame culture stifles and shuts down innovation as employees fear the aftermath of failure. The problem with this is that innovation is an inherent unknown, it’s value lies in discovery by trial and error and that path is littered with the carcasses of failure.

Celebrating Failure

Many start ups, especially in the tech world are turning the traditional paradigm of failure avoidance on it’s head. Google subsidiary, X, the company’s research lab led by Astro Teller, or “Captain of Moonshots” is a failure evangelist. X works firmly in the future rather than the present. Think AI, Google Brain, the driverless car, Project Loon or Project Calico researching life extension none of these would have come into being if Google fostered a blame culture. With a fail fast mantra firmly focused on the future, this culture incubates the art of possibility, of what could be rather than what is. In fact, Teller goes one step further actively encouraging experimentation by celebrating and rewarding failure (see our blog on Moonshots for more on this). This organisational culture embraces error reporting, shunning shaming and cover up. Proving Stanford Business Professor, Baba Shiv’s claim that failure truly is “The mother of innovation.”

Creating a No-Blame Culture For Innovation

Researchers at the Johannes Kepler Universitat (Rami, U. & Gould, C. 2016. From a “Culture of Blame” to an Encouraged “Learning from Failure Culture”. Business Perspectives and Research) found 3 drivers necessary to shift away from a blame culture.

1. Act on covering up errors. If they’re hidden you can’t learn from them. This comes from the top and is usually influenced by leadership style. A punitive, authoritarian leader is less likely to persuade employees to discuss and learn from failure than a delegative, authentic leader who listsens. Genuine conversations need to take place around the value of error and it’s inherent correlation with innovation. Take a leaf from Google’s dream leader, Teller and throw a failure party.
2. Error communication. The research found that employees in fast paced organisations with elevated workloads were more likely to report their errors. Where error was caused by lack of knowledge or training it was less likely to be reported. One of the most important factors in error reporting was peer support. This requires a people focused leadership style along with trust, transparency and openness.
3. Social backing. This is really about buy in and trust. Employees need to believe that their colleagues have bought into no blame, error reporting. They also need to trust in the leadership team and that there is a real investment in innovation through fast failing. If employees secretly believe that the honesty required for error reporting will come back to bite them on the ass, your culture of innovation will fall down at the first hurdle.

12 Steps to Creating A Failure Friendly Innovative Culture

If you’re building a start up or leading an established business these steps are necessary to shift from a blame culture to an innovative learning culture.

1. Model the behaviour you want to by admitting your own mistakes. A learning culture instead of a blame culture starts at the top.
2. Discourage your managers from promoting a purely task focused performance culture.
3. Promote open error reporting for large and small errors equally.
4. Examine your systems, do they support or reward error outing rather than creative discussion?
5. Ensure that all employees prevent error cover up.
6. Place the spotlight on error management rather than people blame.
7. Make sure that you have buy in from your leadership team to create a constructive error culture
8. Cultivate a culture of discussion, creative debate and non-judgement
9. Shine the light of error responsibility on procedures and systems rather than people.
10. Make sure than competency and knowledge deficit is reduced by training your people.
11. Celebrate and reward failure in a tangible way.
12. When you enjoy a success borne out of failure communicate it to all levels of your organisation.

Want to know more about creating a no-blame culture or building innovation and creativity? We offer consultancy, training, bitesize, half day or one day training courses along with conference sessions on how to build effective organisations. Contact us at admin@planetpositivechange.com to find out more. We’d love to talk with you.